I'm sorely tempted by the hardback of the new Joe Abercrombie, which I can get for less than the ebook. The ebook is £8.99, the hardback is half price in WHSmith, at £8.50, and cheaper still from amazon themselves.

I'd never normally buy a hardback or a premium ebook, but I'm a big fan of Abercrombie and I'm not sure I can hold out. I have his last two books in hardback.

I'm sorely tempted b the hardback of the new Joe Abercrombie, which I can get for less than the ebook. The ebook is £8.99, the hardback is half price in WHSmith, at £8.50, and cheaper still from amazon themselves.

I'd never normally buy a hardback or a premium ebook, but I'm a big fan of Abercrombie and I'm not sure I can hold out. I have his last two books in hardback.

When in this situation, I would buy the hardback, and donate it to my public library after finishing it. That way I feel that my money is helping so many other people as well Maybe a thought to help you with our decision?

Harry T is right in that in Europe, dead tree books are either exempt from taxes or taxed much, much lower than ebooks.
In Germany it's 7% vs. 19% which really is an atrocity. If you want a good laugh, check out this EU taxation list, arranged country by country and go straight to line 6 to see the difference. Ebooks are listed below books as "Books on other physical means of support".

EU folks, better look away in this case or it will ruin your day as it did mine.

Amazon tried to help out customers by having its HQ is Luxembourg so they could offer ebooks at the same low rate as dead tree books at 3%, but of course the other countries are waging a war against them now.

When in this situation, I would buy the hardback, and donate it to my public library after finishing it. That way I feel that my money is helping so many other people as well Maybe a thought to help you with our decision?

It is the other way around. If you are willing to pay more for an e-book than for a paper book, of course publishers will charge you more for the e-book. They would be foolish not to.

They don't want you to buy the eBook at all. The only reason they are forced to produce them is mainly due to author demand.
Anyone in major publishing will not deny this.

I'm talking Big 6 here.
They have complete control over the paper book industry, but have zero control over the eBook industry, which they are desperately losing to indies.
When they finally start going under, and authors begin to repossess the rights to their back catalogues, as they've already begun to do, we will see eBook prices plummet.

It has nothing to do with the production costs or perceived value etc.

It has everything to do with legacy publishers dragging their feet into the future and trying their absolute hardest to slow the popularity of eBooks.
And that is basically it.

So, in a roundabout way, the more you buy the paper copies over the eBooks, the longer the prices will stay higher. But I'm obviously talking longterm here.

It does NOT have "everything to do with legacy publishers dragging their feet". It is no more complicated than simple economics 101... charging what the market will bear.

ereaders were considered "boutique" devices. When they reached critical mass, they were selling between $200-$300. People with enough disposable income to justify that purchase would certainly be willing to pay a premium for content to fill those devices.

In addition, the size of the ereader market is such that it isn't large enough to generate the type of revenue and profit that they want. The higher prices for ebooks aren't about slowing the popularity of ebooks, it is about obtaining revenue targets from a smaller audience.

ereaders have yet to reach the commodity stage of consumerism. At the current rate of new devices being released and prices being lowered, that point will probably be the holiday shopping season of 2013.

Once ereaders become impulse items and are hanging on the racks at checkout lines in supermarkets, then we'll start to see the pricing of ebooks drop. When there are 100's millions of dedicated ereader devices (no, iOS and Android apps don't count) the market will be sufficiently large enough to hit those revenue targets at lower ebook pricepoints.

Bottom line: why would publishers lower their ebook prices when people who own ereader devices are buying ebooks at the current prices?

I can't figure out why I would want to pay more for a set of electrons than I would for the hard copy version of a book. To me it just makes sense that an ebook should either be priced the same or less than a pbook version of that same title.

I'm with Crich. Why would I ever do that? Would never do that ever. I don't want to pay more however, I would gladly pay less and the fewer dollars the better. I also would not pay more that $8 for anything don't care who it is or how good it is no one is worth more than that. The average NY Times mass market paper back cost $10, $2 more than my limit. $2 would not mean much to most people however I often ready 90 books a year and $2 more per book means $180 more per year and that's really a sizable chunk of change and I would not shell out that much.

I can't figure out why I would want to pay more for a set of electrons than I would for the hard copy version of a book. To me it just makes sense that an ebook should either be priced the same or less than a pbook version of that same title.

I can't figure out how people reason when they have these opinions. Is more weight always better? To me it just makes sense that what you can do with the product and when you can buy it totally control how much i am willing to pay. And ebooks wins nearly always over paper books for ordinary fiction books.

I can't figure out how people reason when they have these opinions. Is more weight always better? To me it just makes sense that what you can do with the product and when you can buy it totally control how much i am willing to pay. And ebooks wins nearly always over paper books for ordinary fiction books.

If we were a captive market, sure. But we're not. If I decide not to buy one book, I have a nearly infinite number of other books to choose from. It doesn't seem to me at all obvious that the advantages of the e-book make it worthwhile to pay more for the e-book, because it's not at all obvious that I should buy this book instead of some other book. The only reason publishers would charge more for the e-book is that they think that we will pay it. If we won't pay more for the e-book than we would for paper, they won't charge more for the e-book.